Our origins

IAM Cloud was started quite literally in a garage in Sheffield.

Adam, our CEO, was working as a consultant when he had a bolt of inspiration for a wholly cloud-based identity management platform. He pitched his idea to his employer – a specialist in identity management services – and while they liked the concept, they felt that having their own platform would create a conflict of interest with their partners. So they declined the proposal.

Adam was convinced though. He saw great potential. Enough potential even to take the gamble to leave his successful job to venture into the unknown and start his own company. A few of his colleagues saw the vision too, and joined him for the ride.

Adam started feverishly working on his creation at home in his garage-turned-office.

Going from idea to POC to actual sellable product had its challenges though. One in particular: No one had any money. So, to stand even a remote of chance of keeping things going while the new platform could be built, the team would need to continue doing consulting for the time being. And that they did.

Around this time just as IAM Cloud was being launched Adam met Leon, now COO, at a party in Sheffield. Leon and Adam hit it off right away. Leon had more of a business and marketing background and had just finised an MBA, but he was also a lifelong techy and had taught himself to code in the 90s as a teenager. Leon immediately saw awesome promise in Adam’s idea and was enthusiastic to come aboard.

And initially things went really well. Growth was exponential, and we won a series of awards including a major one from Microsoft. But despite that for some time in the early years a tension grew between the early consultants and the product teams. For the consultants, consulting was a way of life. Whereas to the software teams, consulting was a means to an end. A side-stream of revenue that helped the business get started until the platform had reached maturity and could pay its own way. Eventually there was a rift and the company effectively split in two. It was a turbulent time. Not least because those of us continuing on the software team had to cope with a sudden loss of earnings, right at the time we were being confounded by a number of significant technical challenges.

The period of 2016-2020 can be best thought of being the IAM Cloud Dark Ages. A time where from the outside in, precious little seemed to be happening. But where on the inside, with our heads down, we grafted, and grafted, and grafted some more. And we set in place the foundations the rest of our history shall be built upon.

Unlike Leon, Adam is not a native Sheffielder, and indeed on the surface the pair differ quite a bit. But Adam, Leon and Sheffield all deep down have a lot in common: Industry, innovation, graft, resilience and broad-set shoulders for taking on big challenges and responsibilities. They also have simple working-class backgrounds yet share ambitious and progressive attitudes towards the future. Combined, these are all the traits that drive the vision and culture of IAM Cloud.

Today IAM Cloud is a much more international company, or indeed technically 5 companies. We have colleagues in the UK, Ireland, Spain, Czechia, Germany, Poland, United States, Argentina and Australia. But Sheffield still remains at the company’s roots – both literally and in spirit.